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CD/DVD Releases: 5 New Release From Cuneiform Records

Posted on Monday, January 16 @ 12:00:00 UTC by nightowl

Cuneiform Records announced the following 5 new releases for the month of January.

Ergo - If Not Inertia ($15.00): "[Ergo] has a deft touch when it comes to molding silence and drones into rich celestial balladry....a nifty confluence of George Lewis's dreamscapes and Miles's Lonely Fire, and while it's a record that invites you to watch the embers glow, it does its fair share of shooting off sparks." -- The Village Voice

"... this atmospheric collective, which takes full advantage of electronic programming and cross-genre appropriation... performs in celebration of its intentionally spooky new album... -- New York Times

Ergo is a unique electro-acoustic jazz ensemble, who mine areas in sound that no one else in jazz approaches. While all the players have a strong background in conventional jazz, they are also all young players who have grown up listening to a wide variety of music and they have also grown up with contemporary technology. If Not Inertia is their third album and they continue to use the same basic sonic palette that has characterized their work from the beginning: Brett Sroka performs on trombone and computer, Sam Harris plays piano, prepared piano and Fender Rhodes piano and Shawn Baltazor is the drummer.

If Not Inertia is a release of quietly building and subtly stunning music; music based on loops, improvisation, small composed motifs and the interplay of the musicians. For the first time, on this release, they have worked with two guest musicians, both of them guitarists. Acclaimed new-music/new-jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson appears on nearly half of the album and acoustic guitarist Sebastian Kruger appears on the final track. The guitarists add a new texture to Ergo's sound; a sound unique in jazz today!

In addition to the music, also included on the CD is a .mov file of a five minute, high quality promotional "making of" film entitled The Making of If Not Inertia, which has some interview insights from the musicians, as well as some insight from the studio sessions on how this album was created.

You can hear a track from the album here. Find it here at Wayside

Forgas Band Phenomena - Acte V (CD + NTSC (all region) DVD $21.00): "For those of you who grew up on the Return to Forever / Mahavishnu Orchestra / Weather Report strain of modern jazz, you will love this group. There's no mincing words about the Phenomena tag this band is proud to own -- terrific music made by a wonderful band that cannot be a trade secret for too much longer. Viva Forgas!" -- All-Music Guide

"Composer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Forgas has been making music for the last four decades, and now in the heart of his fifth one, he still has not run out of ideas to put into musical forms...[Forgas’s writing] and arrangements display elements of orchestral-jazz, ambient-rock, and progressive-bop with ethnic accents based in Eastern Europe cultures, the Middle East, and the Latin World. It is as if he pulls various influences out of the air, and transforms these bits and pieces that he grabs into magnificent complexes of multi-textured broths." -- Jazz Review

For over 35 years, composer/drummer/bandleader Patrick Forgas has been making progressive jazz/rock music in his native Paris. He has led various incarnations of his Forgas Band Phenomena for nearly 15 years and four previous and excellent albums, all of which have featured shifting personnel, but the group featured on Acte V, the group's fifth album, has been stable for five years and is the same group that performed on their last release. So, happily, the band still consists of Forgas, Sebastien Trognon on saxes and flute, Dimitri Alexaline on trumpet and flugelhorn, Benjamin Violet on guitar, Karolina Mlodecka on violin, Igor Brover on piano and keyboards, Kengo Mochizuki on bass. These musicians enliven his compositions with an energy and verve that gives his compositions the performances they deserve!

Fusing new jazz directions with the electric crackle of rock with inspired solos, the music will appeal to fans of Frank Zappa's instrumental works, Jean-Luc Ponty, Mörglbl, Return To Forever and Mats/Morgan Band. The quality of the music and performances is obvious from the first note and we're not the only ones who have noticed, as the group has been invited to play some very high profiles concerts: in 2008 they were invited to Seoul, South Korea to perform and - more relevant to this release - in June 2010, the group were invited to perform at pentultimate edition of NEARFest, performing to a packed audience of over 1,000.

The concert was recorded and filmed and is included here as a 75 minute DVD alongside a completely new studio CD. The CD album features six new songs, ranging in length from 6:30 to 13:30, while the DVD is not only the group's first-ever concert DVD, but it's a wonderful summation of their work almost from the beginning, featuring a composition from their 2nd album, Extra-Lucide, two songs from their 3rd album, Soleil 12, two songs from their 4th, Axis Of Madness, and two songs from their Acte V!

This special package is sure to be a milestone in progressive jazz/rock, capturing a great band at the top of their game and allowing the public a rare chance to see a group like this captured on a professionally shot DVD!

You can hear a track from the album here. Find it here at Wayside

Michael Gibbs and the NDR Bigband - Back In The Days ($15.00): "Gibbs' music is full of intriguing inner detail that does not deflect from the ultimate destiny of his pieces." -- BBC Music Magazine

"Mike Gibbs' ingenious arrangements suggest a pop art incarnation of a traditional big band -- assembled from blistering guitar riffage, fiery brass and deeply idiosyncratic rhythms ... [his music] ... nevertheless retains the soulfulness of conventional jazz, and for all its mind-expanding consciousness, the music speaks to the body as loudly as it does the intellect. Most impressive is the tactile sumptuousness of Gibbs' sound -- the music boasts as many tints and textures as a Pantone Color Guide." -- All Music Guide

Brit-jazz composer and arranger Michael Gibbs was born in 1937 in Zimbabwe. Starting in 1959, he studied in Boston at the Berklee College of Music, the Boston Conservatory, Tanglewood and the Lenox School of Music, where he studied with a who's who of contemporary jazz and modern composition: George Russell, Gunther Schuller, Iannis Xenakis, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and others. In 1964 he moved to the UK, where he engaged himself in the rapidly emerging contemporary UK jazz scene. Starting in the late 60s and continuing into the mid 70s, he recorded a number of highly acclaimed and influential albums featuring many of the most prominent British-based jazz players who, like Michael, were beginning to flirt with jazz/rock. Since the mid 70s he has worked as a educator as well as a free-lance arranger, doing arrangements and orchestrations for major names such as Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Peter Gabriel among many others, while too infrequently recording his own music.

Back In The Days is an audiophile recording of this great, too infrequently heard jazz composer and arranger fronting a well-honed 18-piece big band in a program of original modern jazz plus three specially arranged classics. The band is chock-full of great soloists and ensemble players and the legendary vibes player Gary Burton is a featured soloist.

After too many years of lack of consideration strictly because they were not Americans, the profile and interest in the 60s/70s wave of British jazz talents has never been higher and Gibbs is one of the major names in the field. From beginning to end, Back In The Days is a delight for fans of Brit-jazz, contemporary jazz and modern big band music!

You can hear a track from the album here. Find it here at Wayside

Joel Harrison / Lorenzo Feliciati / Cuong Vu / Roy Powell / Dan Weiss - Holy Abyss ($15.00): Holy Abyss is a collaborative effort between guitarist/composer Joel Harrison and bassist/composer Lorenzo Feliciati. Joining them is trumpeter Cuong Vu, Roy Powell on Hammond B-3 organ and piano, and Dan Weiss on drums.

A masterful electric jazz outing from five great players, this group personifies the worldwide nature of jazz today. Joel Harrison grew up in D.C., moved to the west coast in the late 80s and moved to New York City in the mid 90s where he still resides. Lorenzo Feliciati lives in Rome, Italy but travels the world and has collaborated with Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson), Bob Mitzer and Donovan and many others. Cuong Vu was born in Vietnam, lived for a number of years in New York City and made his name as a member of the Pat Metheny Group in the 2000s. He is currently a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. Roy Powell is from England and resides in Norway, where he works in a wide range of music, including mainstream, jazz piano, avant-garde and electric, funky jazz. Dan Weiss lives in New York City where he has recorded with many of the brightest, upcoming names there.

Harrison and Weiss have played together for many years while Feliciati and Powell also are longtime allies. Vu has recorded and toured with Feliciati and Powell, so even though this is the first recording by these five musicians together, there is a lot of built in chemistry. All share a love of modern jazz that is devoid of stylistic limitations, inclusive of sounds from around the world, infused with electronics, odd meters, and deeply hued, uncommon timbres and tonal palettes.

There is a wonderful symbiosis between Harrison's and Vu's sounds. Both favor piercing, gorgeous tones mixed with raw, nasty electronics, and that sound, mixed with Powell’s piano and Hammond B-3, is at once jubilant and hallucinogenic, crackling with energy, and then gently subdued. Weiss delivers his signature mix of driving groove punctuated by pithy, unpredictable asides, and the ever-solid accompaniment on upright bass keeps everything grounded.

This is a marvelous program of modern, tasty, tuneful and occasionally haunting electric jazz, reminiscent of some aspects of classic electric ECM work of the 70s and 80s.

You can hear a track from the album here. Find it here at Wayside

Thinking Plague - Decline And Fall ($15.00): "Thinking Plague lays down some of the most rhythmically complex, texturally inventive, and melodically challenging popular music of the last 30 years, and somehow makes it all sound easy and natural." --All Music Guide

Decline And Fall is the long awaited sixth album from a group who personifies the term "beloved underground favorites." From the group's beginnings as a duo doing basement recording experiments nearly 30 years ago until now, Thinking Plague has always had a strong vision of their unique take on progressive rock music. Despite the very long lifespan of the band and the many years between records, the basic sound of the group and instrumentation was set early and the years since have seen interesting variations on their sound, from the stripped down approach of the earliest work to the deep layering of electronic sounds and samples of their last album. Decline And Fall strips back a lot of the 'studio-isms' and more than ever, sounds like the work of a really powerful band. The album adds a few new surprises, most notably the addition of wonderful vocalist Elaine Di Falco who fits right into what may be the band's most demanding job. She sings with poise the band's hallmark melodic lines - passages that would trip up a lesser vocalist. Also new is keyboardist/drummer Kimara Sajn who plays with tremendous authority on both instruments (although just before finishing up the album, the group added drummer Robin Chestnut who appears on one track). Returning are long-term members Mark Harris on saxes and clarinets, Dave Willey on bass and Mike Johnson, the band's guitarist, leader and composer.

A new album by Thinking Plague is always an event; working slowly and unwaveringly, the group has released a handful of brilliant, art-rock classics. Decline And Fall is the latest of them.

You can hear a track from the album here. Find it here at Wayside

NOTE: Wayside offers special pricing for people buying the five new releases on the label; if you are interested, please see the front of the store and look for the happy piggy bank!

[Source: Cuneiform Records/Wayside Music]

Posted in Album Release News